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ChristopherJam
Registered: Aug 2004
Posts: 1409 |
How did you get started?
I noticed a lot of reminiscing on PAL's "I want to code" thread, which was interesting to read, but pretty off topic so I'm starting a new topic over here :)
I, too, got my c64 coding off the ground with a copy of the Commodore 64 Programmer's Reference guide (pdfs of which can now be found at http://www.commodore.ca/manuals/c64_programmers_reference/c64-p.. ). Initially I was assembling by hand, and entering the code as BASIC DATA statements - I don't miss those days at all.
I switched to FASSEM as soon as I got hold of a copy (in 1986 IIRC), and did a lot of debugging of my own code and examining of others' using my brother's Final Cartridge, before eventually graduating to an Action Replay (don't ask me to remember which versions!) I particularly remember spending hours poring over a disassembly of Walker's music routine as extracted from Armalyte, and printed out on sheets of green and white paper.
My fastload coding bible was and still is Immers & Neufeld's "Inside Commodore DOS" - one of the few paper books I still refer to.
How did you guys get going?
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SIDWAVE
Account closed
Registered: Apr 2002
Posts: 2238 |
I learned from using/watching Kaze's sourcecodes for our demos, TST. Then i learned from ripping tons of music, seeing all kinds of code in games and demos.
I had an assembler from the start in 86. Whole TST used CBM macro asm, with Kwik-Write (word processor) as editor.
I didnt get the PRG book before 1993, and then i knew it all.
Using assembler from the start, has made me a very structured coder, and i hardly make any bugs.
The very first "start" of anything, was to use a diskmonitor, and write greetings to myself in various crackintros. (85) :-) |
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spider-j
Registered: Oct 2004
Posts: 498 |
I really started with Puterman's article (already mentioned in the other thread):
http://codebase64.org/doku.php?id=base:demo_coding_introduction
Then I bought 'Alles über den C64' (which I think is the german version of the programmers reference guide) and '64 intern' as books. |
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MagerValp
Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 1078 |
Datormagazin's assembler school circa 1988 and the FC3 monitor. |
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Mr. SID
Registered: Jan 2003
Posts: 424 |
FC3 monitor too, later Giga-Ass, then Turbo-Ass. Rodney Zaks' 6502 book stolen from school library (still have it!) + I/O register guide from C64 manual. |
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Bob
Registered: Nov 2002
Posts: 71 |
this was back in 1985/1986
I was merely 15 years old and had a desire to do stuff other then playing games, luckily there where some good coders around me that could guide me..
like Gullum/CCS (computer brains cracking service) he was basically the one that showed me initial that you need a final cartridge to start with... floppy drive etc..
and he was a heavy name already back then, I was merely a noob hangaround back then ;) how ever not long before some friends and I started swapping games and that proved to be Contring, Swallow and Euzkera ;) anyways who really got me to start coding was Lorien / Defjam
thats where every thing startet, he was a subscriber of zzap64 :) and there where some minor articles about demos and coding but that was enough to light our fire and so it startet a loong journey ;)
so the big WOW's where 1001 crew the judges with think twice,, those demos where absolutely stunning, I forgot about games and used to watch these for hours and they where my heroes.. and one or two years later I was doing the same things ;) ish..
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Street Tuff
Registered: Feb 2002
Posts: 88 |
started in smon and later in fc3 monitor. learned from some articles in 64er magazin and from the rodney zacks book that i stole like mr.sid from the school library. what a coiincidence :-D |
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chatGPZ
Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 11386 |
i blame my father :) he is a math teacher and back in 85 the school got a dozen c64 setups sponsored from commodore. math teachers were supposed to become cs teachers, so he brought the thing home at weekends and holidays, including a ton of literature on general programming, algorithms and BASIC :) somehow i was so fascinated about it that i didnt even miss the games - and it turned out that after a few weeks i would be the one to explain things to my father, instead of the other way around =) somehow it then showed quickly that what i wanted is making demos, this is something i could rescue from the very first tape i had =) a year or two later i was introduced to The Famous Five and Florasoft and eventually formed my own shitty local lamer group International Cracking Entertainment .....
as for coding, i have used SMON and then AR-monitor - i did not know about "real assembler" until 1995, when i re-joined the scene :) |
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algorithm
Registered: May 2002
Posts: 705 |
Started out by reading and following tutorials in a book (think it was from jim butterfield) used smon for coding until I got an AR cartridge. Then would look into code in demos from this and get an idea how irqs were set up etc. At the period 1994 to 1995 I must have coded around 80 demo parts using AR and tape deck. All of which was ofcourse rubbish.
Did not touch c64 assembler at all until i had a pc. Started making c64 demos again with previous knowledge on amiga and pc probably some time in late 2006. |
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Martin Piper
Registered: Nov 2007
Posts: 722 |
Quoting ChristopherJamInitially I was assembling by hand, and entering the code as BASIC DATA statements - I don't miss those days at all.
While I started on the ZX81 with BASIC it was really the C64 where I started to really fall in love with machine code.
Write assembler on a note pad. Write hex codes next to the assembler. Poke, lots of poke. Crash. Try again.
Lots of screen/border effects and raster split tests.
I wish I still had my original notes. They were in my old C64 box stored at my parent's place, but during a move many moons ago the old note pads got lost.
I do not miss the 1KB of memory or the wobbly 16KB RAM expansion. Not one bit. |
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Radiant
Registered: Sep 2004
Posts: 639 |
I started writing shitty BASIC "games" and even some simple demos when I was 8-9 years old (1990-ish). I knew back then that you were supposed to use machine code if you wanted to get any good results, but I only had one friend who was into programming and neither he or I had any idea how we'd go about learning it, nor what software/hardware we would need to do it... Needless to say we didn't have any money of our own either.
Then I got an Amiga and stuck with various BASIC dialects such as AMOS and Blitz Basic 2 until I was 15 when I finally learned C. From then on I've coded stuff in many different languages, tried my hand at for example OS programming as well as web development, application coding, games development and even some PC demo coding, but it wasn't until I finally got a Retro Replay and diskdrive for my C64 in 2004 that I found what I'd been searching for programming wise. I remember basically coding all day and night back then, in a state of total bliss over what I'd found. :-)
Puterman's tutorial helped me a lot, but it was actually Cruzer's tutorial over at C64.ch that got me started with the first baby steps. |
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Peiselulli
Registered: Oct 2006
Posts: 81 |
Like Martin Piper, with poking and hex-to-dec calculation.
And with this book:
http://www.c64-wiki.de/index.php/Das_Maschinensprache_Buch_zum_..
After 1 Month I got a monitor program (I didn't remember the name, but it wasn't S-Mon). And from 1986 on this monitor that i found on tape again in the last days:
Turbo-Macks System 64
The first time I used a source code assembler was on Amiga, the K-Seka :-)
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algorithm
Registered: May 2002
Posts: 705 |
My first experience with machine code based terminology was when I was born however asking myself to issue a cry opcode by many processes such as commanding mouth muscle then air through vocal cords etc :-) |
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Cruzer
Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 1048 |
My graddad taught me the basics of BASIC on his C64 back in 1986. Just a few commands like print, input, if/then and goto, and I was ready to make my first adventure games.
Then I went through everything they had in the library about BASIC, and later machine code, as well as tutorials in computer mags and of course the PRG. I also disassembled a lot of other people's stuff in mc-mon, learned tricks from others by word of mouth, got hints about routines in scrolltexts, etc. And much later I was able to finetune my knowledge with all the great info on the internet.
I guess what's most important if you wanna become a coder is to have your own drive, and keep believing you can do it, even when you discover how hard it really is to put together a lot of small instructions to a big working program.
When something doesn't work like you thought it would, you can either give up and take it as an indication that you've got no talent for coding, or be curious about why it doesn't work, and keep trying until it does. The ones who take the latter approach are the ones who succeed. |
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algorithm
Registered: May 2002
Posts: 705 |
Certainly it takes motivation and perseverence but having the mindset for it is the important thing. All these combined make the difference between a good coder and bad one |
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Bitbreaker
Registered: Oct 2002
Posts: 508 |
I started to help out my elder brother after he got his first c64 where he also wanted to code a bit. First i calculated and drew sprites on squared paper by hand, and i wanted to get my hands on that new toy whenever possible. that was around the age of 9 or 10.
However soon my brother lost interest on all the c64 stuff and i was happy to borrow that and misuse it for my purposes. First i had a monitor loaded by tape, no idea which one it was, it was located @ $c000, so much i remember. In the beginning i started to mix basic and assembler stuff. Later i also got hands on a C16 that had luckily a built in monitor. Here i learned more about 6502. Some later i bought my own c64 + amber-monitor (the graphicians in climax hated me for that, as i always ignored any colorscheme) + a 1541. Now nothing could stop me. It was the time i did my first very ugly intros and the time i got into contact with my first group climax. In 1993 i was at Eggmans place to meet up and fiddle around for a demo for a whole weekend. Besides some insane boozing event of which i can't remember much details, Danzig showed up and tought me a few important things, like opening the sideborders. That gave me a pretty boost again. Interesting enough at that meeting another coder tried his luck with a VSP but failed as his c64 seemed to be prone to the now solved bug :-)
After obtaining an AR6 i finally had my built in monitor that i used until the end of the 90s. Then i switched to TASS. Since around 3 years i finally do crosscompiling with acme.
Most of my initial knowledge i obtained by others and by trying to understand some of the mnemonics by myself. I have the programmers reference guide as a book. But also that book named c64 intern or so, helped a lot.
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Glasnost
Account closed
Registered: Aug 2011
Posts: 26 |
I learned coding basic on boarding school 1988/1989 and soon after machine language by my good friend Mikael, better known as Spinx in 1989 and started immidiately programming some game that i never finished. The reason was probably that one of our schoolmates, Skyhigh, was a big time swapper, who introduced me to demos and from that time i was hooked. Especially the amiga demo from humanoids with the big almost meditative plasmapart inspired me, and was copied to c64 in "The Mist II". C64 programmers reference was an invaluable help to learn to master the machine. My c64 had a built in fault that somehow was so lucky for me.. The TV output changed the colour just slightly at badlines and whenever the VIC jacked buscontrol, making it rather easy for me to find out how various VIC tweaking effects were made. The funny thing is that im still learning tricks making this good old breadbox one of my favourite toys.. |
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Cruzer
Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 1048 |
Quoting radiantxit was actually Cruzer's tutorial over at C64.ch that got me started with the first baby steps. So happy to hear that! I remember that tutorial as quite a failure, since I never finished it or even got to the interesting parts about demo effects, but glad to hear that it wasn't completely in vain! :) |
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Pantaloon
Registered: Aug 2003
Posts: 124 |
am i the only one who allready knew machine code when i was born ? |
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chatGPZ
Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 11386 |
you are crossbow? |
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PAL
Registered: Mar 2009
Posts: 292 |
Mom got a abc80 machines with some fantastic gear to put into the machine... you put this into the machine and you had pole that you could put in something and it peasured the ph value of what it were in. That got me interested in computers... then the dragon32 and then finally the c64 with all the cool dudes that were a bit elder in the neighboorhood having one and all... ohhh... I got heros on the c64 just like the rock and pop stars and then I wanted to be as they. And I liked doing the stuff on the machine and loved to swapp floppys and all. |
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algorithm
Registered: May 2002
Posts: 705 |
Before the c64 my experience with opcodes was with this diy computer kit that only had 10 leds a beeper and a number display. I think it was one of them radioshack kits. Only had 128 bytes of ram if I recall correctly |
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Dane
Registered: May 2002
Posts: 423 |
Many are the coders who I have tormented with the eternal question:
"Yes, but how does it work?"
Eventually some things tend to stick. |
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JackAsser
Registered: Jun 2002
Posts: 2014 |
I started when I was 5 years old, with some simple basic stuff (I have the disks still lying around! :D). So, technically I don't even remember what it is like not to know how to code. Then I quickly moved on to Amiga Basic, then Amos basic (more available gfx commands). After that one year of pascal, then C in Dos (high school, coding doom-engines). Then moved on to Java when that was released. C++ got acquired along the way, dunno exactly when and how. Then came iOS with obj-c etc... Anyway, back in 2004 I moved back to the C64 and actually bothered to learn 6502-assembly and with the previous programming experience it was quite simple indeed! :D |
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NecroPolo
Registered: Jun 2009
Posts: 231 |
Interesting stories, thread was a good read :)
First of all, I don't qualify as a coder but I had some fun with C64 programming. It's like a lifelong mystery where I can explore little steps time from time without seeing the whole. In the mid '80s in the elementary school I did a lot of stuff in BASIC because I calculate really (I mean really) wrong on paper and I'm quite lazy when it comes to things that I don't care much anyway so I got most of my time consuming math and physics calculating homework done with my C64. I also had some machine code books but looking back, they all missed the right direction, left out some must-have keys to catch up, at least to me. I was always playing music with anything I got in the hands so I ended up using SID editors, it was effortless and clear from the start so I dug myself into it and forgot BASIC. Looking back I realise that BASIC and C64 composing experience directed me to my present profession, during the years as a studio engineer I was programming a lot of stuff from old bogged MIDI sequencers to broadcast processors quite easily without actually knowing how to program. Also, I was also interested in game music creation from the start but I had no contact and luck back in time because the house of the only quite competent game coder I knew burnt down with all the project sources we did together, only some memento SIDs remained. I thought it was time to quit and boxed the C64 for a long while.
Over a decade after, I dug out all my old C64 stuff when I created a SID remix album an sent the bunch of my old SID tunes to iAN CooG and HVSC. He sent me a little player in machine code, 10 lines or so? I figured out how it works and I started to expand it. I started to read Puterman's and Richard's tutorials and started to understand some basic principles that were so clearly demonstrated there. It was like continuing an old adventure but now with a good map. I also learned to respect this machine even much more than before. Due to my terrible math and a somewhat too loose systematical thinking (that was proven to be a blessing for music creation/production anyway) I'll never be a coder as I can see in "matrix" only in music but for sure I'll have a lot of fun while doing anything on C64. I guess, having fun is the most important thing in it as this old machine is one of the few little corners of the world that is not fucked up. |
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Stone
Registered: Oct 2006
Posts: 172 |
When a classmate got a computer I was immediately hooked on the idea of programming. When I bought myself a book about some random programming language and started writing programs on graph paper, my parents probably realized that I was serious about it and got me a C64. I learned Basic, but it wasn't very satisfying and I knew that none of the games I had were written using Basic. They all had these mysterious SYS lines that nobody knew anything about, other than that behind it all there was "machine code". I found the Commodore 64 Reference Guide in a bookstore and together with figuring out how HESmon worked, that was the biggest Eureka! moment of my life. I learned a lot from cracking games in the early days, but figuring out how to do raster interrupts actually came from hacking a Danish Crackers intro: Danish Crackers Intro |
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PAL
Registered: Mar 2009
Posts: 292 |
Stein... love you! You are one of the best programmers on the c64 ever and nobody knows it!!!!! That is my eureka... you blew all with offence scroller on x that we did together and you know what.... it is the best demopart ever in the history of the c64! It is even better than my unitrax fetish parts you know... we did it, you coded it... I made it legendary with the shadows... you made it eternal with getting the shadows in there... they made it without shadows but it were all about the shadows... that made it the best ever...... bestest ever! Thank god for your parents! Without them the best demopart would never have seen the lights! |
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TWW
Registered: Jul 2009
Posts: 545 |
After "programming" my dads VCR to hell, one day when I came home from school in 1986 (10 years) a C-64 was lying in the living room. It was with a tape recorder and a double tape-game collection thingy with Rambo II, Kung Fu Master, Fighter Pilot & Things on a Spring (If I remember correctly).
Quickly discovered equal minded persons in the neighbourhood and started swapping turbo tapes. I even got a double tape-recorder to do the copying. I received a 1541 roughly half a year after this and started the same business with disks.
After a year of playing/swapping and a little poking around in Basic I got inspired by the intros and we also got hold of some demos.
I got hold of an EPYX fast loader (I think I borrowed it from Kjetil/direct Design) and started messing around with the monitor. Also had the monitor which loaded to $c000. Had no clue what I was doing but maanged eventually to steal a Raster Compare IRQ routine (people didn't like to share too much) which allowed me to play music and I could maange to display a char logo.
I then ordered myself a AR6 and the C64PRM which changed things completely. It wasn't before around the release of 'public domain' in 92 I started using Turbo Assembler. This simplyfied matters a lot.
in 96-97 I went to College and started working along side of it. So it wasn't untill around 2000 when I wound an assembled which allowed me to code on the PC and run the code in a n emulator (never looked back to Norway and didn't have any posibility to drag my HW around with me (Worked World Wide)).
But all the time I was always thinking about doing... Then when I discovered KickAssembler (Thanks Mads) I got a renewed interest and gathered the other lazy remnant of Creators and founded the group again. It's purly a "we do it when we like it" kinda club as RL issues are taking it's toll on all of us.
Today I feel I am sitting on a lot of knowledge but I am not afraid to ask and I especially don't give a fuck what people think (I'm too old for that shit).
Biggest problem is too many projects / too little time / loose interest once the main obstacle is cracked in something I want to do. So I do 1000 different things and never finnish any of them :-)
The worst part is that I am really proud of having been a tiny part of the sceene but weirdly enough, noone gets it when they ask what I like to do for a hobby 8-) |
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chatGPZ
Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 11386 |
here is something to show your friends: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRkZcTg1JWU :) |
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Flex
Registered: Feb 2002
Posts: 111 |
what becomes to a man and a demopart... Was it really Stein and THAT SCROLLER....?? Now I'm ashamed I never offered the man a double before X2012!!!! :-) Stein knows what. Love you guys at Offence!!
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The Phantom
Registered: Jan 2004
Posts: 360 |
Awesome topic BTW....
I programmed a little on an atari 600xl, my first "real" computer. It's ok. I'm not ashamed ;)
My sister purchased a c64 for a few, A FEW, hundred and after a year with it, passed it to my younger brother (reeet-mon). He didn't do much with it, I think he ran a bbs on C64, but for the life of me, I couldn't tell you what it was. He eventually went Amiga and passed his c64 on to me in late 1987.
I purchased the pricey koala pad and went at it. Released a few picture demos, and was asked to join MMI (metal maniacs Inc.) I drew a bit for that group, released a few items (which I would love to find BTW).
Eventually, changed MMI to FOE and here I sit. Old, complains a lot, hardly drinks, always high and still, STILL, I prefer drawing on c64. It's gotten a little easier with the plethora of editors and I still use old school tools, like Centauri or OCP, still like packing with ECA,, but use exomizer (SP?) at times.
Today? I've quite a few projects in the works. A demo, some artwork demo, a nufli dragon that'll probably never get finished. These days, I code probably a demo part a year.
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Fungus
Registered: Sep 2002
Posts: 686 |
in Basic I started on the apple IIc in like 1980 or something...
assembly I started in I think 1990, but didn't poke around on it much as I was playing in bands and getting laid at the time... but in 92 or 93 I got a lot more interested in it. I decided I wanted to make cool raster bars and intros and maybe some demos, so I started looking for books on it. I got Jim Butterfield's book and taught myself assembly in 6 months, first I used the Warp Speed monitor, then I bought an Action Replay and used it instead. Once I started talking to other people coding on boards, I ran into Roy Batty and Moloch, and they turned me on to Turbo Assembler and I started coding for real. Man those were the times, it was so fun and everything was new. I started with figuring out how to time raster bars and whatnot, then I figured out scrollers and how to make a logo swinger after I painted one in Centauri Logo Edit. That logo sucked balls and I deleted it thank god... shortly after I made my first (terrible) demo. Batty thought I was pretty good and we got to talking and we ended up forming MLM along with Waveform (RIP)...
After that I got on irc and started to talking to people there. I had great conversations with Deadbeat, Graham, Crossbow and Oswald. It just went on from there... contrary to popular beliefs I coded first, and cracked later ;) I actually started cracking because I wanted games to work on NTSC better than the fixes I had, or old games which didn't work at all... I got told it was lame to fix someone elses work, so I started figuring out how crack, I talked to JJ The Breaker and he helped me alot, also the guys from TSD. My mentors for real were Deadbeat and Sorex, and taught me that quality is better than speed ;)
anyways, enough ranting... |
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Oswald
Registered: Apr 2002
Posts: 5094 |
I will never forget that Fungus taught me on IRC how to do FPP ;)
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Fungus
Registered: Sep 2002
Posts: 686 |
and Oswald taught me how to do Plasma =] |
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Flavioweb
Registered: Nov 2011
Posts: 463 |
When i was ten, my parents gave me a Philips Videopak+ VG7400 with -Microsoft BASIC Home Computer Module (G7420)-.
Here i started to learn coding basis, reading users manual and typing examples...
Live in a small country town don't help at all to find infos or books on how to code, not even find softwares are so simple.
Meanwhile my parents realized my passion for coding, registered me to a course in "code for businness" where was taught to me how to code some gestional applications using basic on a Laser500 computer.
Arrays, sorting (bubble sort, quick sort...), data manipulations... thing where i -graduated- with good grades.
In that period, many friends are become the owner of at least one Commodore computer, and i was struck about quantity of software and books availables for those machines.
I worked during the holidays so i can buy a C128 with C1541
and among classmates and friends i owned a lot of sotwares and infos...
Here is about 1988/89 when i'm in touch with people like Mamasoft of ICS that gave me some sources and tools (tass, char editor, a -sid player- coded by Marco used for ripped tunes... and much more than i can remember...) when i'm officially started to code in assembly.
The rest is history. |
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Skate
Registered: Jul 2003
Posts: 494 |
I've started with an Atari 800XL with a combination of Commodore 64 Programmer's Reference. :) First a few basic examples worked (plain print/goto stuff etc). But when pokes and other stuff involved Atari refused to run those basic programmes. That's where i started "thinking"... |
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TheRyk
Registered: Mar 2009
Posts: 2246 |
Guess I was simply too young, didn't know the right ppl, read the one mags (mostly those focused on games) and had terrible IT teachers in the mid/late eighties. I 99% consumed and produced nothing really worth mentioning, unless sb gives a damn about BASIC at home (Atari800XL in the mid80s, C64 V2.0 later) and Comal/Pascal in school. Though my father was a professional coder, he didn't bother teaching us kids assembler, cause my mother was (rightly) of the opinion my bro and me spent far too much time indoors with the computer (gaming) anyway.
The rest is well-known (PC era --> roughly 15 years hardly any thought about 8bit apart from nostalgic talks with friends and booze --> ePay bargain --> hobby --> "collection" because friends gave me their ancient hardware/disks/whatsoever --> obsession? --> Codebase, Groepaz and other German forum users started teaching me what my father didn't back then...) :)
@Skate: In terms of gaming, Atari made you an outsider/weirdo at that time, C64 was the latest shit. But Atari Basic was really much better than C64 V2.0. You could do sooo many things so easily with intelligent commands instead of POKE/PEEK/SYS combos. |
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spider-j
Registered: Oct 2004
Posts: 498 |
Quoting TheRykGroepaz and other German forum users started teaching me what my father didn't back then...) :)
Yeah, maybe this is a good hint for beginners: learn german first and come to Forum64 :-) I think without guys like Groepaz, Peiselulli, Enthusi, Crossbow, Graham, etc... (sorry, can't list you all) who are so nice to spent their precious time patiently answering questions there to us 'newbies', we wouldn't even be able to do effects that - how Groepaz would say - were already old in 1985 :-) |
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chatGPZ
Registered: Dec 2001
Posts: 11386 |
ugly sprites in sideborder never get old though :o) |
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Flimsoft
Account closed
Registered: Jun 2013
Posts: 2 |
I have just began reading on assembly language. I am reading the Commodore Reference Guide to begin with. It seems a challenge but BASIC did when I was learning that, suddenly things click into place.
I think once I understand what different memory locations do I might be onto a winner! Many things to grasp in the world of assembly.
I just ordered a beginners book by Shiva which I also have for BASIC programming. So hopefully in a couple of years time I might just be releasing my own demos :) |
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Adam
Registered: Jul 2009
Posts: 323 |
first got started? well, it all started in 1987 (when i was 7yo) when my school teacher introduced us to BASIC programming. the man was light years ahead of other teachers and the education department. he knew computers were the future and educating his students to know how to use them was high on his list of teaching priorities. I didn't bother to learn assembler for the c64 until many years later. during my time on the amiga i did try and learn 680x0 but never got too far. music, girls and partying was more important then ;D
Here's what I used to try and learn machine language for the C64:
1. C= programmers reference guide
2. Commodore 64 Exposed by Bruce Bayley, published by Melbourne House (ISBN: 0-86161-133-0) (c)'83 beam software
3. How to program your Commodore 64 by Sam D. Robers, Ing.W. Hofacker (ISBN: 3-88963-184-3) (c)'84 Ing.W.Hofacker (germany)
4. Machine Code Graphics and Sound by Mark England and David Lawrence (ISBN: 0-946408-28-9) (c)'84
..and a few other books ;) |
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Conjuror
Registered: Aug 2004
Posts: 168 |
I got started in 1982 when my primary school teacher introduced me to the VIC-20. A year later I got one at home and started to create clones of hand held Nintendo games in VIC-20 basic. I created about a dozen of these very quickly when I was taught collision detection was just peeking the screen location. A few years later I got the c128 and started to learn assembly. That's when I began to notice intros on games. I was still more interested in writing games but saw writing intro type effects as a way to learn the skills needed.
My only reference was the c64 programmers reference guide and for quite a while I used the action replay 5 monitor to do all my programming. In 1988 I met a lot more people locally from who I learnt about Zues64 Assembler, which I used for all my future c64 programming (until modern times - now its KickAssembler all the way) |
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Saxxon
Account closed
Registered: Mar 2009
Posts: 12 |
How did I get started? Hmm..
I wrote a macro assembler specifically targeting C64, and then wrote some simple things in it. From this, I learned a lot about 6502 assembly. I then graduated to using cc65 and wrote lots of simple music routines until I got the hang of program flow and data control. This all started maybe two years ago, and was done in spare time in between work and other music projects.
The ultimate goal? To write a music routine that had a sound that I could call "mine", and also to crack some of my favorite old games. While I haven't written a music routine that I am (yet) satisfied with, I have had some success in cracking. |
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TPM
Registered: Jan 2004
Posts: 110 |
So you just started to write a macro assembler? You're a fast learner ;) |
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Saxxon
Account closed
Registered: Mar 2009
Posts: 12 |
Quote: So you just started to write a macro assembler? You're a fast learner ;)
I was a programmer for many years before doing this project ;) Just never got into assembly, and of course it's so much more fun to roll your own when you know how! :D |
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Dr.j
Registered: Feb 2003
Posts: 277 |
Hey I was never been in programming before ,was ripping'n'hacking
like most of the lamers in the good old days (when i was
at the Force '90-'91 ) started to study ASM from the beginners website of Richard Bayliss "The New Dimension" 4 years ago ,after then got big push from Steven Dalton who recommend to move to Kick Asm and send me over some examples he made , since then i hooked by Kick Asm. and started coding intros (big fun!) so i can say for myself you can always start coding 6502 no matter if you have or don't have coding background . |
